The word mental vertigo is well known to pilots. It simply means dizziness. When a pilot gets into mental vertigo, he will actually begin to fly by his feelings and not by the instruments in the airplane. This is not usually a problem, as long as the pilot can see the horizon outside the plane. But, if he should happen to fly through clouds, he no longer has a horizon to help him determine if he is flying straight and level. Studies show that if a pilot who is not qualified to fly by his instruments happens to get into the clouds, you are given only about three minutes to live! That's right, only three minutes. Not too promising of a situation, is it?

Before someone can qualify to get their "instrument rating", they first must get their private pilot rating. After building their experience with their private pilot rating, they get additional training for the instrument rating. The instrument rating takes nearly as much training as the private pilot license, costs more, and is much more difficult. Hence, this is the reason why many pilots don't get that rating.

An experienced instrument pilot knows not to obey or listen to his feelings. In fact, this pilot will have learned to ignore them completely. When a pilot is in instrument conditions (clouds, bad weather, etc.), he may literally feel that the airplane is climbing when, in reality, it's really descending. Now picture this: You are flying an airplane that is diving toward earth. But, because of mental vertigo, you feel that it is climbing. If you feel that the airplane is climbing and you want to stop it from climbing, what do you do? You will push forward on the control column to try to level the plane. But remember, you actually are diving. So now you push the nose of the airplane forward, because that's what you feel you should do. You have now made your condition worse! You push the nose of the plane forward to go down but you are already descending. You essentially now have less than three minutes to live. Say your prayers!

Now you might ask, "can't the inexperienced pilot figure that out? Can't they just look at their instruments and see that the plane is not doing the right thing?" The answer is really yes, but the desire to listen or fly by their feelings far overwhelms their desire to believe the instruments. This is due to the fact that they don't have enough "experience".

Have you ever had a point in your life that you felt so sure about your success? It's a good feeling to have, isn't it? But let's say while you are on your journey of success, something happens. You may not be able to but your finger on it, but that feeling of confidence you had just yesterday, or for that matter just five minutes ago, is no longer there. Have you had that feeling before? I think we have all experienced that at one time or another. If you could take that limited feeling and put it into a bottle, you could label it as mental vertigo. Here is the difference between the person who gets a lot of results and few results: the person who can master mental vertigo and eliminate it from their thinking as quickly as possible will get the most results.

I think before we go deeper into understanding mental vertigo we first must lay down some ground rules. One of the biggest mistakes that I see people make is that they really don't have a clear definition of success as it relates to their business or financial goals. Here is where the real danger lies.

You need to hold on to your goals or definition of success if you get into mental vertigo. Vertigo causes lots of frustration. If we don't clearly have a hold on our big picture, the frustration will fester like a cancer and eat us alive. We will have a tendency to make things bigger and worse than they really are. Having a solid, clear definition of success helps us to look beyond the vertigo. Without it, we crash.

Another thought to keep in mind is that frustration equals success. Stop and think about any of your successes, or even those of others. One thing that all successes have in common is that there is a tremendous amount of frustration attached to them. But it seems so hard to remember this little 'rule' when we are experiencing all the frustration. But, the more we can get ourselves to believe this, the more results we will also get. Results are a direct response to frustration. It is similar to the 'higher the risk, the higher the reward' statement.

So when you become frustrated, what specifically goes through your mind? Unfortunately, most people feed on the negative or make things bigger and worse than they really are. They make it so big that they become totally consumed by the frustration. It is at this point that we really need to have a clear definition of success. Why? Because we don't have a reason why we must effectively deal with and get through this frustration.

You cannot allow frustration to take you to the next level of success if you don't clearly know what the next level is. Continue to realize that frustration is a feeling, and feelings can be changed and controlled. By clearly knowing what your goals are, you will have a reason why you need to master the ability to deal with frustration. Understand too that success does not come without frustration. Frustration is really pain. Build a higher tolerance to mental pain and you will not allow frustration to cause you to stop in the middle of your tracks. Charge that frustration with the tenacity of a bull. Accept it. Welcome it. And you will see more success!